This morning AMD is releasing the first APUs in their Kaveri family,
their most advanced APU ever with up to 12 compute cores and is a big push forward
with their overall HSA architecture. We managed to get our hands on a Kaveri system
with A10-7850K APU and in the days/weeks ahead there will be many Linux benchmarks
looking at the next-generation AMD APU. Here's what Linux users need to know right
now about AMD Kaveri APU Linux support.

While it didn't look like we'd get Kaveri pre-launch, given AMD's mixed Linux
interest in recent times, etc, at the last minute we were offered an AMD Kaveri
test system for providing the Linux community with the necessary information they
need for making an informed purchase. A friendly engineer also ended up sending
out a second A10-7850K that will be used for other benchmarks and ultimately used
as part of our OpenBenchmarking.org
/ Phoromatic test farm. While we were
sent an A10-7850K review sample in advance, its delivery date of this past Friday
was unfortunately postponed by FedEx over the nasty weather situation in Chicago.
Fortunately, I was able to pickup the Kaveri system on Saturday afternoon, to
at least have some launch-day AMD A10-7850K Linux information to share. Unfortunately, this didn't
allow enough time to have our complete launch-day coverage we usually have with
major hardware launches.

While there isn't the full onslaught of AMD A10-7850K "Kaveri" Linux
benchmarks to share today, there will be the proper performance benchmarks in
the days ahead -- including comparing the A10-7850K to older AMD APUs and various
Intel Core i3/i5/i7 CPUs. There will also be the many other Phoronix articles
we always do when getting a new CPU/APU microarchitecture from compiler optimization
testing, driver comparisons, Linux kernel tuning, distribution comparisons, etc.
Your feedback on tests you would like to see is listened to as well from Twitter
and our forums.

Kaveri features up to 12 compute cores in the form of two dual-core x86 modules
and then eight GPU cores that are GCN derived. AMD expects Kaveri to deliver up
to 20% better IPC performance for these four processor cores that are of the "Steamroller"
microarchitecture. Steamroller is 28nm based and features improved instruction
schedulers, larger caches, an improved memory controller, and various other improvements.
Kaveri has a transistor count around 2.41 billion and a die size of 245 mm2.

The Kaveri APUs are a big push for AMD's Heterogeneous System Architecture
(HSA) with the GPU and CPU cores having uniform visibility to the entire memory
space, improved flexibility in dispatching work, and the design can allow for
better tapping the full potential of the APU. In system performance AMD's Windows-based
slides claim 24% better system performance over the Core i5 4670K and 8% better
performance over the previous-generation A10-6800K "Richland" APU.

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